EQ'ing Bass Question

[Creativemind]

Hi All!

Just a quick bass EQ question.

Do you wanna cut everything below 20hz in a bass sound (synthesized bass sound) or because it's bass leave it in?

Also, on the opposite of that, do you wanna cut everything after 250hz as that in kind of is where the bass frequency ends isn't it?

Thanks!

[Rason]

Hi Creativemind. Regarding the lowcut it is recommended to do so, cut below 20 or even 30 - thats the subsonic material humans dont hear so it just eats the room in your mix. Highcut, however, totally depends on the type of bass and the stuff you work on. If you take for example reese bass, that one is whole spectrum bass and you want to have the crispy growls at the top for sure. But having standard el.bass guitar -that one has not too much going on at the high frequencies, unless you want to keep the finger slaps in it. Highcut is subjective decision and based on the particular situation. Hope it helps.

[Creativemind]

Hi Creativemind. Regarding the lowcut it is recommended to do so, cut below 20 or even 30 - thats the subsonic material humans dont hear so it just eats the room in your mix. Highcut, however, totally depends on the type of bass and the stuff you work on. If you take for example reese bass, that one is whole spectrum bass and you want to have the crispy growls at the top for sure. But having standard el.bass guitar -that one has not too much going on at the high frequencies, unless you want to keep the finger slaps in it. Highcut is subjective decision and based on the particular situation. Hope it helps.

Thanks mate. This is just a general synth bass (not organ) for a house track so I guess nothings needed above 250hz is it? would the frequency spectrum tell me anything I should be looking at at all? The frequency spectrum seems to drop off quite a lot at 1.3kHz and completely decay at 8khz or there abouts. The sound using a LP filter seems to not be noticeable that it's cutting the sound till it gets below about 1kHz.

Maybe I should just wait till more is going on with the track (at the moment it's just the bass and a piano) and then use my ears, low pass the bass and move down till it sounds ok in the mix? in other words, don't bother EQ'ing anything till there's some kind of muddiness or issue.

[JeremyNSL]

I would say as a general rule, cut everything that you can't hear. If you can't hear anything above 1khz, cut all that. If you can't hear anything below 30-40khz, cut it too. Feel free to make more cuts beyond that if your mix benefits from it - for example if you have another element in your mix that is centered around the mid-bass, then cut those frequencies off your bass so they don't stomp all over each other and create muddiness.

BTW the more you cut off the bass end of your track, the louder your entire track will be after mastering (because loud bass eats up your headroom). So there is that trade-off to consider as well.

[scratchnsnifff]

I literally just made a bass sound design tutorial and had the same question come to mind hahaha, i leave it in, and i always go by the rule of if it sounds good.....its usually good i suppose it depends if the signal has mad mud, (my rule of thumb, if its a muddy signal don't use it)

[Loque]

Cutting the whole bass removes the pressure it produces. Rather combine dynamic EQs, multiband compressor, compressor or gater to let each sound through what you want to be present. If you cut, than dont cut all, 6 to 12db is more than enough. Rather shape your sound with an EQ, than cutting and raising the volume to make it audible.

Too many high frequencies may result in noise, but this can be wanted and it adds harmonics.

Trust your ears, not a rule.

[LABONERECORDINGS]

Hi/Lo-Shelving may be better approach, more natural and warps the signals slightly differently. You can actually make sounds LOUDER when you high pass them, especially at the same frequency harmonic of the signal (aka tuning). Try it with an oscilloscope. Serious eye opener. Something we came across a couple of years ago, which has changed the way we make our sound. We do employ HPF as well though at times.

Another tip: High pass on a buss, not every individual track - reason why? because HPing every instrument on it's own track that isn't bass orientated can make a song/track more wimpy. Doing the HP on a buss applies one dosage of filtering at once (word of the day for us: cumulatively), you might find it's more than enough and keeps your track more solid and less 'synthetic' or 'clinical', which in turn gives character some room instead of removing it all. If you do HP each instrument and then you try and counteract it by adding bass boost on EQ, well, you wont get it because you just stripped it all out. HPing a buss at say 12or18dB/oct still gives you room to boost bass back in, if you have to (you can parallel of course)

Also, if you are sticking to high passing method, listen to the sound in context while you sweep around, then try bypassing the HPF, to see if what you're doing is actually making any difference - you might be getting placebo where because something is on you think it's having an effect. Or if it is doing what you want, ease the HPF down a touch, just to give *some* bass character in. Sterile sounds can sound 'lifeless' if you go too far.

Resonant shelving or passing can be beneficial at times, to cut the low but to also raise the tone at the frequency - this can have a 2 fold effect of cleaning up whilst boosting, all with just frequency knob and Q knob - go too far though and your master output won't approve As mentioned, shelving may sound more natural (think bass / mid / high controls on a car stereo, and that's pretty much shelving) and pleasing, but each to their own of course.

Understandably we all want to keep headroom available, so another approach: lower your input levels (input trim) on the top of the strip, so your sounds are hitting maybe -18dB (traditional 0VU iwrc), giving you lots of room for eq boosting (if required) as well as not caining the master output. Lowering your signal means of course your overall output may be lower, so simply turn up your speakers to compensate. Reference tracking LOWER those tracks to maybe -10dB peak, that way you have again room to play with.

[LABONERECORDINGS]

Maybe I should just wait till more is going on with the track (at the moment it's just the bass and a piano) and then use my ears, low pass the bass and move down till it sounds ok in the mix? in other words, don't bother EQ'ing anything till there's some kind of muddiness or issue.

Yes, totally this. Get the ideas down, make sure the instruments all work before going nuts with correcting, else you'll be chasing round and round (eq bass, then find kick is too bassy, so you EQ the kick then find low end all gone, so you find another kick to reinforce, then your bass is missing so you turn it up... vicious circle)

[theshoemaker]

I'm doing the HP/LP cut on the Console whenever I have several instruments in the same area playing. Sometimes I have 2-3 devices doing different arpeggions or pads, which I wan't to have in as distinct sounds. Cutting them clean helps here to separate and isolate the specific character from that instrument without the sarifice of removing harmonics/overtones whatsoever. I guess it depends on what you want to do soundwise.

[Creativemind]

BTW the more you cut off the bass end of your track, the louder your entire track will be after mastering (because loud bass eats up your headroom). So there is that trade-off to consider as well.

So you're saying bass frequencies absorb or cancel out some high frequencies then?

So when I get the track built up more and I get to the mixing stage, is there any order to Eq'ing things. Would you notch first (take out any rumbles / resonance and whistly sounds) then HP / LP filter and then EQ (cut or boost)?

[JeremyNSL]

No, I'm saying that bass frequencies are generally the highest peaks in the mix, by a wide margin. If you look at your track in a waveform view, you can usually see each peak created from the kickdrum and how much higher it is than the rest of the track.

By lowering the volume on your loudest element (bass and/or kick), you can then turn up the volume on your entire mix. Also your maximizer will work better (if you are mastering your track in Reason).

I don't think the EQ order matters that much. Personally I would probably LP/HP filter each track, then notch anything were necessary.

BTW the more you cut off the bass end of your track, the louder your entire track will be after mastering (because loud bass eats up your headroom). So there is that trade-off to consider as well.

So you're saying bass frequencies absorb or cancel out some high frequencies then?

So when I get the track built up more and I get to the mixing stage, is there any order to Eq'ing things. Would you notch first (take out any rumbles / resonance and whistly sounds) then HP / LP filter and then EQ (cut or boost)?